MEMORIAL 


TO THB 


LEGISLATURE OF KENTUCKY BY THB 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO, 


PBESSNTBD 


JO THE SENATE MARCH 5 , 186T. 


FRANKFORT, KY.: 

PRINTED AT THE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFICE. 
JOHN H, HARNEY, PUBLIC PRINTER. 






MEMORIAL ON THE CRISIS.-1867, 


Mr. Carlisle presented the following memorial from the State Sover¬ 
eignty Society of Ohio, which was ordered to be printed, and referred 
to the Committee on Federal Eolations, viz; 

The State Sovereignty^ Society of Ohio respectfully addresses the Ken¬ 
tucky Legislature upon the remedy for the political and social crisis, which 
we believe to be in your hands. The safety of the Union, and of the whole 
Federal system, is suspended upon what may now and hereafter be done 
by the people of these two great interior States. * 

They are central States, contact States, sovereign States, important 
States, different States in their institutions, yet States which can have 
none but a common fate. Between the great cities of Louisville and Cin¬ 
cinnati, as between two massive columns, the gates of the temple of peace 
and war can be opened or closed. Upon us hangs, much more than upon 
any other section of the country, the next act of the drama of revolution 
Your part in the future should be active, and ours will not be passive, 
when you have given us an opportunity for co-operation. It will not do for 
either of us to say we despair or concede our proud position to others. 
We should go forward and take our proper responsibility. The States of 
Virginia and Kentucky, in 1798, were not to be daunted by danger, nor 
misled by evil counselors; nor did they attempt to meet the menace of 
Imperialism by irresolution and inaction. They met it, as we have to meet 
it, by the use of means; and not by complaining and scolding and decla¬ 
mation, but by wise, organized, and deliberate action. As Mr. Jefferson^ 
in almost his last hours, wrote, it was the most important action of his life 
the stand he and his friends took to resist the centralization of Hamilton 
and Adams. It was a determined and successful resistance, made by a 
few patriots at first, but by the aid of the two States referred to—mother 
and daugher—acting under their advice. 

The genius of Thomas Jefferson has made our pathway plain. We have 
but to follow in his footsteps upon this emergency, as the patriots who 



4 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


emote the aggressions of Congress on the rights and the sovereignty of 
the States. 

Our Society has long and deeply studied the dangers of the country, and 
also the only mode of escape. It has been the topic of constant investi¬ 
gation for two years past, and has occasioned innumerable debates. On 
the 11th inst. we assembled, with full previous notice and preparation. 
We invited the presence, and the written as well as the spoken opinions, of 
many eminent Democrats. We read and considered their letters. We 
sat three da^^s endeavoring to arrive at wise conclusions. We have put 
our opinions into a set of resolutions, which are inclosed. The seventh 
resolution is the occasion of the present appeal to the Kentucky Legis¬ 
lature: 

“7. Resolved^ That the Committee on Eesolutions prepare at once a 
memorial on this subject from our Society to the Kentucky Legislature, 
and forward it for their consideration, with our most urgent and respectful 
entreaty that it may have the profoundest thought of every statesman in 
both branches of that great deliberative body.” 

And therefore, upon this serious day, by such a command, the Com¬ 
mittee proceed to make this communication. 

It will be perceived, without explanation, that there is such an accumu¬ 
lation of public calamity arising out of the action of the Federal 
Congress, that we need not make any specifications. The utter overturn 
and annihilation of every vestige of the State form of specific States 
which have incurred the displeasure of other more numerous States, is to 
be accomplished by the aid of the border States of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and Missouri. The ten sovereign States which are to be sacrificed have 
come out of a war of four years and more, which elided in terms of capit¬ 
ulation with the commanding Generals of the conquerors, but which 
there has been no attempt to carry out, although no stronger guaranty 
could have been given. On the contrary, it is proposed to deny to the 
States themselves any political existence, and to their citizens any politi¬ 
cal rights, not even the right to earn a living or to enforce a contract. 
More than that, and far worse than the condition of slavery to an intelli¬ 
gent master, the proud and superior white race are to become serfs and 
servants to their former slaves of the African race, suddenly endowed 
with the franchise and made eligible, high and low, to every oflSce. Kot 
only is this upheaval of society to be enforced by law, but the bayonet is 
to be exclusively placed in the same hands as the ballot; so that military 
black force may make quick work with the opposition of any body to this 
worse than Oriental despotism. In short, if, in the present struggle 


> 


I 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


5 


between power and liberty, the course of the conquerors cannot be by 
some mode arrested, the citizens of the threatened States will have cause 
to envy the fate of the aborigines whom they have displaced. 

Not contented with the desolations of war, wdiich have covered so great 
a surface at the South with vast blotches of human gore, the horrors of 
peace are to exceed them; for, by a fatal process, the policy deliberately 
proposed by Governor Cox of Ohio for four Southern States is to overtake 
them all. His solution of the negro question was only to drive the 
whites out of South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi, and give 
them all up to the blacks; but the policy of Congress is to Africanize the 
whole of them. 

Congress is possessed of a theory which allows the use of what are 
called pacific means for the execution of their diabolical purpose—a pur¬ 
pose which owes its being to the conjunction in the Northern breast of 
hatred and fear of the slaveholder, and not to a pretended philanthropy 
for the slaves. 

The members of this Society have been, and are now, greatly concerned 
about the proper remedy for this awful state of things. They believe 
that they have found it, and that it is their duty to recommend it to the 
State of Kentucky, and that she should respond to their recommendation. 

. If it be true, as claimed by Congress, both in theory and practice, that 
that body of public servants have the right to construe the extent of their 
own powers, then, of course, it is all in vain to talk of extrication from 
the present or any other calamity; for there is no longer any Constitution, 
nor any use for any; the will of Congress, not in pursuance of it, is as 
much the supreme law of the land as when it obeys the Constitution. It 
is the simple regime of good pleasure. Sic volo; sic jubeo. 

We oppose, we deny, we confront, that assumption of doctrine. There 
is not any foundation for it; and no matter how, or by whom asserted, 
it is false, monstrous, and revolutionary. It must, it does, assume that 
there are no States in any union of States ; but that the map of the United 
States, as well as the Constitution of the United States, is falsely entitled, 
and that the lines upon it are not State lines, but only district lines— 
municipal lines—county lines—over all of which Congress can make a 
clean breach at will and for any purpose. 

Our doctrine is the old, consecrated, historical, and philosophic doc¬ 
trine, that a State is a State-integer and not a State-cipher, w^hich is no 
State at all; and that what makes a State, is a territory with a people old 
eqough, strong enough, civilized enough, free enough, independent enough, 
to bo sovereign master of its own actions, and to bind itself by its own 
agreements, and to dispose of itself by its own volition—such a political 


6 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


community as Kentucky or Ohio. We do not hold that the Territories are 
entitled to self-government, nor that they are capable of it; for we reject 
both propositions. Congress has the right to govern them, because they 
are sparsely settled lands, which, by conquest or treaty, have been acquired 
by the United Stales, and are effectually covered by both the negative 
and affirmative clause of the Constitution. That Constitution recognizes 
them by the clause about the admission of new States, as lands held in 
trust for the peoples that may inhabit them; and it expressly provides that 
Congress shall legislate for them by that sweeping clause which gives 
Congress the power to pass all laws necessary and proper to carry out the 
trust, to its object of, in due time and by a familiar process, becoming self- 
governing States. It is not correct to say that the only clause applicable 
to the case is that conferring on Congress power “to provide rules and 
regulations for the territory and other property of the United States.” 
To that effect are the high authorities in the Supreme Court Reports, and 
in the great Senatorial Debates. 

Such a people upon a given territory constitutes a State; it possesses 
the Constitution-making power, and, under our system, whenever any 
such territory contains one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants of 
Caucasian descent, it rises to that condition. It is then a sovereignty^ 
that may constitute itself by a republican organization, and demand 
admission into the Union as a new State; but as free, sovereign, and 
independent a nation as any one of the original States—parties bound of 
course to observe the Federal compact as long as the relation continues, 
but always remaining in a condition to defend the Constitution against 
violations of it which threaten her existence, by forbidding their execu¬ 
tion within her limits; or, if the usurpations become intolerable, justified 
in withdrawing from the connection, so as to secure her liberties from 
destruction. 

This Constitution-making power has always been possessed, and it is 
now possessed, by all the States—by the original thirteen not more nor 
less than by the rest; for there can be no territory held by conquest, even 
if it were Cuba or Canada, under our Constitution, which will not come to 
State-hood whenever its population and circumstances allow. The analogy 
of youth and manhood in the individual is perfectly applicable to the im¬ 
mature and the mature State. As either attains majority, it becomes its 
own sovereign master, irrespective of all others, and with the same rights, 
duties, powers, and responsibilities that belong to the respective organi¬ 
zations. If that be so of foreign conquered territory; if, then, we must 
at once admit the right of the people of a mature State to self-govern- 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


7 


merit and the prospective right of an immature one, how can we deny it 
to our own States and peoples, even upon the odious hypothesis of war 
between the States and conquest of some of them by the others? It can¬ 
not be done. 

The means of holding the Gulf States in violent subjection will be both 
men (soldiers) and treasure (money); which will require both extortion 
and conscription to provide them. Our experience proves, however, thaU 
for a time at least. Congress will not relax her demands. Taxes by direc¬ 
tion and indirection will continue to be laid and collected, and soldiers by 
draft and volunteering to be raised. 

This will furnish the occasion for our resistance; for the acts of Congress, 
violating the Constitution in these particulars as much if they superseded 
the Executive and the Judiciary without trial, can be met by the veto of 
the State of Kentucky, or of any other State. Fortunately, her Demo¬ 
cratic citizens and their representatives in the Legislature have a large 
majority. They can take such mode of redress for the tyranny of Con¬ 
gress as they shall decide to be just and honorable and wise. They can 
forbid effectually the draft of whites or negroes in Kentucky under Mr. 
Paine’s bill. They can likewise forbid the unauthorized and unconstitu¬ 
tional direct whisky tax; and there are many others, besides these two 
measures, by which they can indicate the vital principle of State sover¬ 
eignty for their own benefit, but most especially for the benefit of the 
degraded, insulted, enslaved sister States of the South. 

The end can be reached by a law calling for the election of delegates to 
a State Convention, to be chosen and paid like members of the Legisla¬ 
ture. The preamble to the law should set forth the state of the country 
which demands State interposition. Other acts would bo necessary to. 
protect courts, juries, ofiicers, and citizens, obeying State authority in the 
premises, all of which can be promptly furnished by the friends of liberty 
and of our institutions established solely for its security. 

It is not possible to find any other plan but ours which will meet the 
occasion. 

The President can only resist Congress when the majority there is not 
two thirds; but it is more ; and in the new Fortieth Congress, which sits 
on the 4th of March, for the very purpose of eontinuing the work of 
destruction, the majority will be worse in quality and more in numbers. 
If we had reasons to intrust the liberties of the States, therefore, to the 
Executive, as we have not, he has no power to deliver us. 

The Congress itself, as stated by a great vote in both branches, has. 
ceased to hold itself in check; on the contrary, there is a positive rivalry 


8 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


between the House and Senate which shall surpass the other in acts of 
despotism. 

The Supreme Court is only constituted to try cases, and therefore has a 
email jurisdiction compared with the extent of the mischief. It is a tri¬ 
bunal naturally inclined to usurpation of power against liberty, and its 
past history, almost as much as its present partisan character, disqualifies 
it to arbitrate or adjudicate the tremendous issues pressed by force upon 
the minority of States by the majority. 

If these views be true, we have a very pointed question to ask those 
who hold to such means of interposition, but have nothing to say when 
they are totally unavailing. That question is, how can j^ou deny to a 
sovereign State, in defense of State existence, threatened by a set of public 
servants in Congress who are jointly nothing but State agents, the right 
to interpose the aegis of her sovereignty over the violated Constitution? 
If one man, the President, and he a public servant, might interpose, why 
can’t a State? If a small majority of one in either branch of Congress 
may arrest legislation at pleasure, and without any reason, why may not 
a State? If five judges against four of the Federal Bench, by one vote, 
may declare an act of Congress, no matter how important, null and void, 
why should not a State do the same thing by that solemn and ever divine 
voice of her people, which, from remote and classic time, has been called, 
not impiously, the voice of God —vox populi^ vox Deif 

We know that we have not exhausted the evasions practiced on similar 
occasions to prevent the exercise of the State veto. It is proclaimed that 
the minority of States that have been oppressed by the majoritj^- of States, 
acting by their power in Congress, should appeal for their remedy to the 
ballot-box. This is another mistake of both theory and practice. It is 
an error of diagnosis, coupled with another error of therapeutics. The 
disease and the remedy are wholly misconceived, and of course there can 
be no result except one that is either fatal or accidental. 

The ballot-box alluded to is nothing but the source of the oppressive 
power; it is the will of the majority of the States legally expressed. Con¬ 
sequently, an appeal to it is nothing but a formal appeal to the very 
tyrant himself. It is true that no free government can exist without 
universal suffrage; but that is for the reason that the constituents in 
such a State must have the absolute control of their servants, and the 
power to dismiss them commensurate with the power to give them em¬ 
ployment. That is, however, but one of the two conditions indispensable 
to popular institutions. It is all-important in its place; but it can effect 
nothing in a case like the present. It will but confirm the original out- 


xage. 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


9 


The other condition of such institutions is, that the parties (States) to 
the Union shall have the right and power of self-protection; in brief, that 
each State, encircling, as all do, the very ark of the Constitution, shall 
be able within her territory to veto every dangerous Congressional assault 
upon its sacred authority. 

This assertion of power by the sovereign State of Kentucky will ac¬ 
complish the deliverance of the vassal States—the mediatized States—the 
now outlj’ing provinces of the Empire—the Egypts, Sicilies, and Frances 
and Spains and Britains of old Eome—the Hungaries and Polands of 
Russia and Austria—the Indias and Irelands of England. 

There is no other means under heaven by which their destiny can be 
changed. There is this means, which has received the great indorsement 
of Thomas Jefferson, at the instance of Kentuckians and for the State of 
Kentucky. It eifectually accomplished the object, although avowed by 
only two States, less than one sixth of the whole number in the Union. 
The discussion itself, like the world-famous debate of ten years, from 1765 
to 1775, between Great Britain and the Colonies, will have obtained at once 
that moral and intellectual victory which renders the armed contest com¬ 
paratively easy. But the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-9 
completely silenced the other side, enforced, as they were, by the report of 
Mr. Madison. The good sense of the citizens immediately accepted the 
reasoning and conclusions of the great statesman who led the contest for 
State sovereignty. 

The ballot-box, when thus converted from its previous perversion, came 
over to the right side, and installed the champion^of a true and triumph¬ 
ant doctrine of our Federal system in absolute command. By the election 
of Jefferson,3Iadison, and Monroe, the original direction was pursued so 
long that the system worked altogether in harmony with its principles. 
For forty or fifty years out of the sixty-six since elapsed, the Democracy 
have been in power, and the original direction from Virginia and Ken¬ 
tucky has been pursued up to the calamitous period of the war. 

Since violence begun, we have been in the vortex of revolution, and still 
whirl about in its inner circles, with no possible means of extrication 
except what we have advised. 

The time has surely come for the statesmen of the interior States to 
speak decidedly. If we will penetrate the disguises of the Atlantic policy 
which prevails in Congress, we will find that our great producing States 
are only the servants, and their people the serfs, of Eastern masters. 
These sowed the seed of distrust between the agricultural free traders 
that grew corn and those that grew cotton, by yelling out their philan- 


10 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


thropic distress over the down-trodden African, until our honest fellow- 
citizens of the Northwest began to feel that they were liable for the crime 
against man and the sin against God. Then followed divisions and crimi¬ 
nations, and free trade was slaughtered in the house of its friends, long 
ago, by the cunning device of a stranger. Then came that stranger’s false 
clamor for protection for American industry, which meant low wages for 
the operatives, and cheap and meagre living, high rents, and factory 
impositions on all ages and both sexes; but great, swelling prosperity of 
fat dividends on huge investments for the rich and greedy owners of capi¬ 
tal. By that cunning trick of protection, the Mississippi Yalley is annually 
skinned of her native alluvium, which is carried in bushels of corn and gal¬ 
lons of whisky, in barrels of beef and pork, and tierces of lard and bacon, 
as tribute money paid by dupes who do not deserve the care of Provi¬ 
dence, much less his bounty, to make all the rocks of New England unc¬ 
tuous, and its lean and rugged soil to i^roduce a fabulous profit, while the 
atmosphere breathes the odor of our rose. 

When these “royalites” were put in jeopardy by the better understand¬ 
ing of both the free trade argument of South Carolina and the protec¬ 
tion fallacy of Massachusetts, then abolition philanthropy experienced a 
paroxysm out of which sprang the monstrous sectional and social war of 
1860-5, which will be to our history what the,*civil and social war of the 
first century before Christ was to Kome. 

That was a secession struggle between about the same number of parties 
on both sides. In it half a million of men were sacrificed, with the same 
result that we have attStiined. The consequent injustice of the victors to 
the vanquished, in degrading them among the Eoman tribes, so as to 
destroy their equality of political power, was one of the strongest im¬ 
pulses which sped the Eoman Eepublic on to her dark, degenerate, and 
fallen state under the usurpers, gladiators, prstorians, and emperors^ 
which succeeded at last in blotting the Mistress of the World from the 
family of independent European States. 

The profits of the tarilf system furnished the mainspring of the war. 
It was to renew that desperate clutch on the purses of farmers and planters 
that Yankee manufacturers persuaded and inflamed the thoughtless and 
superficial caucus leaders and managers of the Northwest into hostilities 
with their best friends, their nearest neighbors, their valued customers, the 
households of the Southern States. They inspired the masses of the 
Northwest with their own fanatical, cruel, parsimonious, and exacting 
spirit. They taught us to covet the goods of our brethren by a most 
unnatural and ruinous war. They earried us enthusiastically and heed- 



STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


11 


lessly along with their untenable and vicious theory of the constitutional 
system, until now they have got us into an open sea, in a raging storm of 
their own raising, and lifted out of the stout ship of State launched by 
Thomas Jefferson from the same dock with our own political cradle, the 
famous Ordinance of 1787, into the crazy wherry of modern and dishonest 
origin from the hands of Story and Webster, the Adamses and Curtises 
and Everetts. 

The desire of gain at another’s expense, and the consequent hatred of 
those they have deeply injured, are the real sources of the late war upon 
the Constitution of the United States, not less than upon ourselves and 
the Southern States. Our great valley has become the patrimony of 
strangers. We, who have it by purchase or by inheritance from those 
whose conquest of the whole domain was one of the most daring and 
glorious exploits in history, do not hold our possession any longer in fee- 
simple, but as rack-rent tenants, who, when they have satisfied the 
landlord and tax-gatherer, must borrow to live. And to that low condi¬ 
tion have the most intelligent body of cultivators under heaven, on 
fertile soil, in a favorable climate, and with the almost imperceptible 
burthen of perfectly free institutions, descended quickly and hopelessly. 
A condition of forfeiture^rom over taxation has insensibly fallen into these 
leaseholds. The holders of the bonds, given -without consideration, for 
wasted property and lives, have escaped their own proper burthens of 
taxation and doubled ours. They have obligations payable, principal and 
interest, in gold, but they pay no tax. We have to pay for them to the 
extent of all our property as it was before the war, and also pay our own 
heavy assessments, which would seem to be an impossible injustice, if it 
were not every day upon us, and a mortgage of all we call property 
which is both seen and felt. 

As such a state of things cannot long endure by consent of the victims, 
measures of the most desperate character are being taken to coerce the 
indefinite and prompt future payment of the bondholders, no matter what 
may be the depreciation of estates, the diminution of other incomes, the 
sufferings of families, and the general prostration of trade. The means 
of coercion will be the arming of large bodies of troops out of a general 
enrollment of the adult youth, both white and black, and drilling and 
educating them to war. By a bill now before Congress, the measure is 
fairly on the way to its passage. It is an utter defiance of the States; it 
is the nil ultra of rampant systematized attack in front, upon the whole 
body and spirit of free institutions. We shall not dwell upon it. 

The Legislature of the State of Kentucky stands in the breach through 
which the enemies of the Constitution have to pass. Its responsibility is 


12 


STATE SOVEREIGNTY SOCIETY OF OHIO. 


that of Uoratiiis Codes, who guardad the bridge of the Eoman suburb 
over which the Etrurians must march into the capital. It looked like 
desperation for one man to attempt to hold such a position; but he did it 
till the Sublician bridge was broken down with swords and axes behind 
him, and afterwards he made good his own retreat through the roughest 
waves of the Tiber and thousands of hostile spears and arrows, lie 
saved his country from Porsena’s attempt to restore to a throne in Pome 
the detested line of the Tarquin monarchs. The fate of the Eepublic that 
day was suspended on the desperate resolution of a single hero. While 
he held the entrance of the bridge he not only fought but he upbraided the 
enemy. Livy says that he exclaimed: “Sometimes that he challenged 
them singly; sometimes upbraided them altogether as the slaves of 
haughty kings, who, incapable of relishing liberty themselves, had come 
to wrest it from others.” 

It is our clear opinion that we have before us the same historical ex¬ 
ample. Aliens to our blood, strangers to our people, opponents of our 
opinion, and enemies of our institutions, if they meet no opposition, will 
take us all into their cold embrace, and strip us as well as the Southern 
States, so lately our friends and allies, of every vestige of our precious 
liberty, and all security for its return. 

We have described the danger; we have dwelt upon the means of safety; 
we appeal again to the people and Legislature of Kentucky to take the 
initiative of organized resistance, to which we can soon add our strength 
as individuals and as the great Democratic party of Ohio, now over two 
hundred thousand voters, or one million of citizens. You can evoke these 
powers, if you will seize the grand occasion. You can converge them upon 
the common enemy and save the Federal system by a legitimate exertion 
of innate, sovereign omnipotence. Thus will the State of Kentucky, a 
second time, have the honor of coming at a crisis worthy of modern or of 
antique fame to the rescue of the Constitution. 

ALEXAKDEE LOKG, 
Chairman Committee. 

1. J. Milller, Secretary Committee State Sov. Society of Ohio. 




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